McAfee loses high-profile researcher and CTO

BOSTON (Reuters) - Two senior technology executives have resigned from McAfee Inc, the anti-virus software maker that Intel Corp bought in February, according to a company spokeswoman.

Worldwide Chief Technology Officer George Kurtz, who helped lead the company's product strategy, will leave at the end of this month, the spokeswoman said.

Kurtz could not be reached for comment.

Vice President Dmitri Alperovitch, a highly regarded threat researcher whose work at the company help give it a reputation for conducting cutting-edge research on hacking, quietly left last month, without the company issuing any announcement.

Alperovitch led a research team that produced several high-profile studies on suspected Chinese-government backed hackers during his tenure at McAfee.

Those studies included a landmark January 2010 report in which Alperovitch coined the term "Operation Aurora" to describe attacks suspected by Chinese hackers on Google Inc and several dozen other companies. His team identified the malware used in those attacks, which exploited previously unknown flows in Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer browser.

In August his team uncovered "Operation Shady RAT," the biggest series of cyber attacks disclosed to date, which involved the infiltration of the networks of 72 organizations including the United Nations, governments and companies around the world.

Alperovitch, who has been doing consulting since he left the company, declined to comment on the reason for his resignation.

Company spokeswoman Heather Edell said the company is currently looking for replacements for the two executives.